Professional+Development

Below are conference notes from ACTL 2011 Convention - Empowering Educators Through Collaboration. There is a synopsis of 12 sessions plus a few comments on how we can collaborate as a cross-river team to implement some of these teaching methods department wide if desired. Please contact Eleanor Leyden if you want more detailed notes or hand-outs as they become available.


 * Keynote Speaker -Dr. Milton Chen ** - past director of Edutopia and author of Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools - I have a signed copy of the book. Very inspirational regarding 21st century education including use of technology to change time/place constraints of delivering instruction. Many web resources as well. Fascinating.


 * Standards Based Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) - Dr. Bonnie Adair-Hauck, University of Pittsburgh **

This workshop was a full day hands on introduction to the theory and practice of Standards Based IPA as developed through an ongoing university research project.

An IPA allows you to test a student through a cycle of Interpretative/Interpersonal and Presentational tasks that are tied to performance proficiency rather than any one curriculum. They are aligned with ACTFL standards and congruent with UBD principles of McTighe and Wiggins. As such in curriculum planning you can determine what you want the student to know and be able to do, plan the assessment tasks and then plan the unit of instruction to reach that goal. In placement or cornerstone assessment the tasks provide enough information and scaffolding that a student can truly demonstrate what they know how to do without relying on specific vocabulary from a specific curriculum. In other words, an IPA is not tied to a specific curriculum methodology or vocabulary set but measures language proficiency as compared to a native speaker. Hence it is global and authentic assessment that can be used across classes, schools, school districts, and still be valid for each learner.

In the classroom each IPA sets up a student for success. It is scaffolded from the easiest task (interpretative) to the most difficult (presentational). After the interpretative task teachers can provide feedback, not correction, which allows a student to alter his or her performance on the interpersonal task. This second task allows for interaction, which refines ideas for the final presentation task.

IPA's allow you to gather much solid evidence of what a student can do. They can be used as formative or summative. Many teachers use IPA' instead of textbooks to guide and plan instruction. The flexibility of an IPA is useful as the same text can be used at different levels as long as you edit the task although some texts are more easily approached by novice students.

The workshop provided training in selecting IPA texts and creating the tasks at different levels. It also provided a complete set of rubrics, scoring sheets, and conversion guides for grading.

I highly recommend that our language programs take a look at IPA' as cornerstone assessment instruments and modified IPA tasks as placement tests. Please note that Gente Spanish texts use forms of IPA's in their units, which makes them highly effective.


 * Collaborating for Proficiency: Empowering Students through Technology Enhanced Communicative Tasks - Paul Garcia, Marcela Van Olphen, Alessandro Cesarano and Wesley Curtis - University of South Florida **

The main point of this session was actually how to move students from novice level to advanced which is the point of developing proficiency after all.

Novice learners thrive on personalized, egocentric messages - ME, MYSELF and I. In order to get them to improve you have to let them create messages about themselves and their world and not have them regurgitate pre packaged messages from other sources therefore creating communicative opportunities is essential. The principles to remember are meaning is primary, communication problems need to be created to be solved, there must be a relationship to real world activities, task completion has priority and assessment is in terms of outcomes.

Steps to getting novice learners to move towards advanced are to provide skills and opportunities to use circumlocution, discourse markers, past time narration. The best activities are information gap, web quests and interviews in which you have to get unknown information.

An example of a task based communicative activity vs. a plain old activity is as follows:

1) Draw your family tree and explain it to a partner (One Sided Presentation)

2) Draw part of your family tree and have your partner ask you questions in order to complete it for you. (Interpersonal Communication Task)

Taxonomy of communicative tasks will be provided on a PDF later, In meantime most useful tech tip was to use CLEAR Conversation 2.1 in which you can create asynchronous conversation tasks. Use of text formats such as chat and IM was also suggested as relevant to teen life and definitely communicative. Text and Oral are both communicative. (More tech platforms were suggested such as blogs, face book and wikis)


 * Games to Teach - Developing Digital Game -Mediated Foreign Language Literacies - Julie Sykes UNM Jon Reinhardt UA **

The main question to ask in looking at digital gaming for language learning is whether you are playing to learn or learning to play? This makes all the difference between authentic experience and value. It can be argued for in a variety of ways.

In current pedagogy we can look at game -enhanced learning or game-based learning. The first means adapting existing commercial games to serve language learning purposes and the second means creating games for the purpose of learning languages.

What makes a digital game good for language learning? It is fun, has a purpose and specific objective, has competitive elements is audiovisual and is often played with a community. Overall it harnesses compelling behavior and creates lots of discourse.

More elements that make games suitable are, everyday practice, engaging and motivating (they are complex and interesting while requiring you to do some unpleasant things in order to get what you want), provide new social environments and literacy practices and are cultural products. They are highly effective learning environments in many disciplines

For languages, games give real time just in time scaffolded and personalized feedback, which is the best possible kind. It encourages emergent discourse on help websites and chats and lets students access authentic communities (i.e. I want to learn Korean so I can play WARCRAFT on a Korean server). Games set up strong contexts and community.

The Advantage of Game Enhanced Learning is students already know the game and the community is there. The disadvantage is security, privacy and language which may be too complex

The Advantage of Game-Based Learning is students and teachers can find weird areas to develop and tailor to all levels and purposes. The disadvantage is that technical quality and development take time and may not be good. Also the games may be too educational to be fun.

The presenters have some games available on request. This is the wave of the future. This is worth investigating more especially as we have 1:1 laptop program.


 * Global Citizenship Starts Outside: Using Outdoors to Enhance Language Learning - David Benson and Denise E Phillips - Concordia Language Villages **

There are compelling reasons to go outside besides to do environmental projects. Research has shown that getting outside makes you smarter, happier and willing to fix the planet. Additionally Mother Nature furnishes a "braincation" - which helps to decrease ADD - increase attention span, provide better memory, reduce stress, improve mood, and contribute to greater creativity. ADD and NDD (see Last Child in the Woods) seem to go hand in hand.

Design Principles of Expeditionary Learning can be adapted for language learning with proper preparation. Getting outside can involve using target language: to play simple games, explore environmental and global issues, go on field trips, enact mini-curriculums or modules One mini-curriculum culminates in a camping overnight with language immersion. (Planning camping trip in French).

The IB program would lend itself to this kind of interdisciplinary approach. Students could be prepared to conduct environmental field studies in a target language with adequate preparation.


 * Teaching Students to Be Great Conversationalists - Abby Dings and Ted Jobe, Southwestern University **

Students are usually frustrated in conversation with native speakers because of problems with limited vocabulary, knowing how to take turns, how to use listening markers and coping with unscripted responses.

Students usually don't make progress in conversation with other learners because neither partner has the knowledge needed to maintain an authentic conversation.

A conversation is a co -construction between two people and is a complex act consisting of initiating, maintaining discourse, repairing broken passages, turn taking and bringing to a close.

The problem in class is how to expose students to conversation models from authentic listening materials. Full-length films are problematic as they are too long/ diffuse while adapting a television series is much better (continuity with a stable cast of characters and a story line) with lots of conversation examples.

The presenters explained how they **used Cuentame Como Paso (Spanish television series TV E1)** to improve student conversation. The program has a didactic goal to tell how life was in Spain under Franco and illustrate the transition to democracy. It has a format like Wonder Years (used for 3rd and 4th semester university Spanish so high school levels 3 or 4)

Students loved it and often talked about it. They internalize cultural information - easy to assimilate as it is dramatized. They see the siesta instead of an explanation of it.

For a sample activity with Cuentame to improve Spanish conversational tactics please contact me and I will give detailed notes.


 * Measuring Student Progress with Each Unit of Instruction - Paul Sandrock, ACFTL Board of Directors **

An amazing session with one of the big boys in the FL assessment world. The main point is to make sure that we balance our assessment and that we truly create interpretative, interpersonal and presentational tasks that are firmly in that mode. The most problematic area is true interpersonal tasks. Just because they are talking does not mean they are really constructing their communication. There are 11 different ways to use assessment information including: feedback, quick checks to see what we do next, evaluate teaching, program level, assign a grade, motivate students, evaluate assessment instruments... etc NO ONE assessment can fulfill all these purposes. You must choose your assessment for your purpose.


 * Balanced Assessment includes: ** Learning Checks - did student learn what was taught? Formative Assessment - can student apply or manipulate what they have learned? Summative Assessment - what have students acquired? A designated point in time and a gauge to see if students reach benchmarks. Interpretative Mode means we are asking students to understand language not produce it. We can offer checklists; summary lists, matching exercises so that they can identity information but not produce new language.

Interpersonal Mode means we are asking students to construct meaning. Do not confuse interpersonal with presentational;

1) Prepare to interview a famous person, research, write down questions and be ready to conduct interview, summarize the life of the person (presentational)

2) Prepare to interview a famous person, research, write down some questions which are personalized based upon information in text such as questions such as " What is the price of being famous?" Or "Did you ever dream this would happen to you". This provides personalized, creative responses that require interaction.

Must scaffold activities with vocabulary and other helpful items they can use in creating a conversation. In addition you can scaffold activity tasks from structured to more creative: Ex:

Here is Susan’s calendar. Say what she did yesterday (past tense) What did Susan do yesterday? Match the events with the most logical time she did something and then say what Susan did yesterday. What activities do you like to do when you are bored? What do you like to do in your free time?
 * Structured **
 * Creative **

Ask you partner about likes and dislikes related to sports and classes With your partner try to decide which sports activities to do that week? Due to budget cuts we have to cut classes and sports. Discuss which you want to keep and which to cut.
 * Structured **
 * Creative **

Identify two similar holiday celebrations in US and target culture. With a significant other decide how to celebrate a common holiday in both cultures**.**
 * Structured **
 * Creative **


 * Some techniques for learning checks and scaffolding: **

TALK scores task check done by teacher or other students: Target Language, Accurate, Listens, Kind (plus, check, minus) (Shrum and Glisan)

Keep them talking - give an envelope with follow up questions as a back up to get a conversation going... goal is to use the least amount of questions - give score 10 - 0 based on questions used.

We could make good use of this information in planning our benchmark and cornerstone assessments.


 * Beyond Soda and Popcorn: Film in the Language Classroom, Bill VanPatten MSU, Wynne Wong, Ohio State, Stacey Weber-Feve, Iowa State **

Dr VanPatten is one of the definitive voices in language acquisition in the past two decades. His model is widely subscribed too and solidly researched. He has developed with co-authors a French text book LIAISONS - Heinle Cengage Publishers based on his best principles as summarized below:

Language Development is the mental representation of language and the ability to use it. This mental construct lies outside the learner' awareness yet underlies language use even in students of a new target. The process that describes this is the interaction between input, a universal grammar (UG) and the processors that mediate between the two. The Processors convert data out there into something UG can read. Using a metaphor from the self-scanning checkout in a supermarket: the Bar code is input, the computer is UG and the red laser light is the processor. Teacher Instruction can't directly affect processor or UG but can only affect input.

All this means that learners need to hear language and lots of it. Beginners need to hear a lot and not produce so much. They need thousands of examples and need to be engaged with meaningful input - not produce language but be engaged in understanding it!!!

Structured Input Activities mean not producing but processing language. The new text Liaison provide film structured input - get students to pay attention more closely to language by using small chunks of film (1-8 minutes) with focused listening activities: cloze listening, discourse scrambling, dictation, dictagloss (different from dictation)

In general output processing (or language production) is guided by universal constraints that you have no control over. Fluency and Accuracy only develop from communicative use.

What you do in classroom needs to resemble what happens in outside world therefore the text has Structured Output Tasks - has a concrete outcome - comparison, conclusion, or other informational outcome which goes beyond practice activity and applies to real world Liaison is a full program with pre and post viewing activities.

This session leads me to believe that 1) we should seriously investigate Liaison text as the kind of material that will best develop language ability in our Ab Initio French classes. It is a university level 1 and 2 course which corresponds to Ab In expectations) and 2) we should make an effort as a department to provide lots of listening practice to our level 1 and 2 classes. More film chunks and processing activities. More audio listening activities in addition to teacher talk. We do have a copy of French In Action and Destinos for our level 1 and 2 French and Spanish classes that we could integrate into curriculum along with other materials. One of our department priorities should be collecting and sharing such resources as well as the scaffold activities that support them. This would be a great cross-river collaboration


 * Helping Teachers Meet Students Needs Through Innovative Online Diagnostics Testing - James P Lantolf, Matt Poehner, XiaoFei Lu, Rumia Ableeva, Penn ** State U

These presenters showed a dynamic online assessment form made available by the University of Miami through their Center for Language Acquisition. As well as another dynamic and adaptable assessment form from Penn State U called CALPER. They are is elegant 15 question tests (in a variety of languages including Chinese and French) that provide information about how susceptible a student is to improving with instruction as well as giving precise information on the level of each student. The tests function by adaptability. This means that for every wrong answer the test prompts the student with scaffolded information to assist them in reaching the correct answer. A learning potential score is calculated from the Actual Score of first answer wrong compared to the Mediated Score weighted for how many prompts were needed to arrive at the correct answer. The LPS predicts how likely the student will respond to instruction and predicts from their mediated performance who will benefit from more or less intervention. It narrows the gap between assessment and instruction by letting instructors have data on how much mediation students need and how they profit from mediation. It truly can measure improvement and transfer from mediated to independent performance on the part of each student.

The main point is that students improve via teacher mediation and this tool lets you see how much mediation they need and how quickly they improve from having access to mediation.

This kind of tool can be used for initial placement as it gives very precise information about learning level and behavior. I would use it in addition to another placement tool. It can also be used as a mid year check up to see how students are progressing and who would benefit from more help and how much help.


 * Student Oriented Placement Testing: Methodology, Strategy and Technology - Robyn Clarke, Ana Santos-Olmsted, Yu Li, and Emory University **

This was a description of a university placement tool using WEBCAPE. The online test has a survey component and 20-30 multiple-choice questions that are adaptive - they provide a level check and are adjusted as student takes the test. The survey asks for number of years of study, tenses studied, percentage of student and teacher target language talk in past classes, years out of language class. The test is scored instantly but teacher needs to make final evaluation. The test can be linked with registration system. Instructors still need to do level checks within first week of instruction.

Other online placement tests were examined - usually the tests are written, reading and listening and delivered via Blackboard or WebCT. Princeton, Stanford and Yale provide an online test and on-site oral interview for their placement.

Presenters recommended creating one 's own online test, as it is more convenient, efficient, economical and accurate if well designed. Emory University provides a nice example:

Welcome Page Instructions - introduces students to structure of program Questionnaire - describe past experience, provide demographic, asks questions about their past program Exams - 3 separate exams - elementary, intermediate, advanced Semi- adaptive - all students start with all elementary questions and if threshold is reached they can proceed to next level - possible 3 different scores.

Test Question Format: Multiple choices with sound files for listening comprehension, reading and grammar.

How does it work? Students self enroll. Results can be checked in Grade Center

How well does it work? After 5 years only 5% or less needed reassessment

How to design your own test?

Use multiple levels of tests Use small number of test questions - do not overwhelm 32 total questions with 20 minutes of testing.

I think this kind of online delivery would be beneficial to our Chinese and Global languages department. Currently we have no way of capturing a demographic on our students, which would be helpful. A simple test design delivered through Moodle can be done onsite with a password and then data immediately available to teachers. This does not preclude a written response section which can also be made available online via such delivery systems as Stamp or Avanti or modeled after their testing samples. We currently do not test listening, which is a key skill, and helps indicate level also. From the viewpoint of efficiency, better placement and meaningful data capture this could be quite worthwhile.


 * Using Voice in Online Courses - Mayumi Ishida, Dartmouth, Satoru Shinagawa, University of Hawaii. **

Most online courses are text based which is good for readers however, Can you imagine a face-to-face text based classroom? Unimaginable yet it happens in online courses! With sound files, a web cam and screen capture programs you can make your online course speech based and even interactive.

Interactive Video Lectures have a note-taking interface that students can use to take notes and submit to professor with questions for feedback.

Interactive Voice Feedback - students can submit voice files and teacher can record feedback section by section splicing it with student file so student has precisely identified moment of error which is the best feedback. They love this!

Our SAS tech department can certainly set us up for screen casts and other marvels. This looks quite worthwhile if time permits it. It would be great to put all lectures on Moodle files for homework as some teachers are now experimenting with. The interactive factor makes it even stronger as a teaching application. Teachers can get questions ahead of time to address in class.


 * Strategic Reading: Engaging Students with the Text - Laura Terrill, ACTFL **

Teaching is outside the head and learning is inside the head. Just because we taught it does not mean it was learned. Even worse than we did not do that last year is "we did not do that yesterday" - how can we confirm what went on inside the head? This is our issue for the interpretative task of reading.

Interpretative is most important because it is meaningful input - it gives students something to work with.

Background Theory and Thoughts about Reading:

When something is hard to read and we have a choice - we quit - so why are we expecting students to cope with reading? When readers struggle we have probably overestimated their ability. If you give reading and resort to translation you have overestimated the level of students - retarget the task do not edit the text. To avoid translation anchor with images - novice and intermediate need images.

Why read a text? A text has a purpose. In real life we always read with a purpose so we have to create that purpose. Decide what students should know after reading a text. Determine what is essential to know at their level. Determine what students should be able to do with information once they have finished text. Anticipate what might cause difficulty such as cultural knowledge, background info, vocabulary, and organization of the text. Model how they should "hold "their thinking while reading or listening to the text. Strategic Reading _ Pre-Read, Guided Active Reading, Activities to Clarify, Reinforce, Extend knowledge

The balance of fiction and informational texts in curricula is an issue - how much fiction are you teaching? Where is the fiction in the IB program? Milton Chen said students would have 14 different careers - change professions often as their professions will disappear and their training will depend on non-fiction. Therefore we tend to teach more non-fiction however what engages us most is often fiction. Check your balance of texts.

We don't tend to read enough in our lower levels. How come we don't teach reading enough in our levels 1-2? It is perfect as we get little culture bites with authentic texts and vocabulary in context. Start with reading because we want vocabulary in context.

All new brain research says reading first - vocabulary and grammar later - brain wants whole before part - it needs the big picture first. Readers need the whole context before starting on the part. We naturally PREVIEW books and films with plot synopsis.

Research behind why reading should be silent is compelling (nor more round robin reading, no more reading aloud please - don't because it does not allow for processing - reader is worried about pronunciation - audience is ahead of the reader because read silent speed is faster than read aloud). Reading aloud is the fastest way to settle a class down - it is a classroom management activity. Silent reading is important because everyone has to read for him or herself.

Strategies available on handout to be downloaded.

This workshop points to the need for a source of high quality authentic texts for language levels 1 and 2. This could be another collaborative project in which teachers identify, scaffold and share a range of texts and activities so that we have a bank of materials.